From: Philo, John <jphilo@amgen.com>
  To  : 'rasmb' <rasmb@bbri.harvard.edu>
  Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:38:32 -0700

binary files discussion within entire RASMB

In the last two days a couple of things have become apparent:

1) The level of interest in the ASCII versus binary data files question
is much higher and broader than I ever imagined, and 

2) I made a mistake by starting with only a subset of the group that I
knew were active programmers---I should have raised the issues with the
entire group from the start.  I assure you that I never intended to
exclude anyone or establish a clique, but merely wanted to find out who
was interested, and to avoid bombarding people with a lot of technical
stuff that might be of no interest.  (Remember, in principle this is a
discussion group for reversible associations in general, not just AU,
although that is obviously a joke.)

I believe at this point it would be best to abandon my original proposal
of a separate discussion list and for everyone to address all comments
to the entire group.  (Let the floodgates open!)  As long as everyone
indicates in the subject line that those comments are about this issue,
those who don't want to read this stuff can just delete those messages.

Therefore please address your thoughts and comments to the entire RASMB.
I will follow with some re-posts and summaries of things that have been
sent directly to me in the past couple of days, as well as some of my
own thoughts on the issue.

John Philo